“Wait, did you get that? Record it this time, I’ll do it again. Wait, why are you holding it vertical? I need horizontal!” A 12-year-old Sara said to her confused mother outside a crowded Paradise Valley Mall. When you’re trying to go viral, every clip has to be perfect.

The idea of watching subscribers pour in as I racked up views on video after video of mine consumed me. So I tried to replicate it.

I started vlogging at 13 in an attempt to achieve the viral fame that enamored me. I started recording everything: videos of my trips to the grocery store, getting driven around by my mom and clips of myself saying phrases like “you’re sooo Jelly Clarkson.”

I thought that if I took my mundane life, threw on a filter and added some pretty music, maybe I would achieve the same fame as the YouTubers I loved.

Obviously, that fame didn’t come.

Then there was my Twitter phase. I’d spend hours writing up the perfect tweet. After several revisions and read-throughs to friends, it’d be perfect. Still, I’d let it sit in my drafts for weeks on end.

When I was finally satisfied with it, I’d send it off. All I would get in return were a few likes here and there and a single retweet when I was lucky.

Going viral felt hopeless. Attempt after attempt, platform after platform, I still found myself coming up short. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be famous on the internet. Officially discouraged, I decided to lay low for a while.

When I first joined, it took a while to get used to the layout of the lip-syncing app. Many of my older — and now private — posts were short clips of me messing around with effects or trying to figure out how to use the self-timer feature. Once I got the hang of it, though, I saw my glimmer of hope.

"Maybe TikTok is where I go viral," I always thought to myself. I chose to ignore that, though — I didn’t want to get my hopes up again.

But the more time I spent on the app, the more I realized how easy-going viral could be.

Suddenly, everyone was on TikTok. Girls I went to high school with, old neighbors and current classmates of mine were all popping up on my “For You” —a.k.a. trending now— page. The more often I saw people I knew, the more I wanted to make it there -- if they could do it, I could too.

Hashtagging, using trending audio and dueting popular videos were all part of the initial experiment.

A few attempts later, I finally went viral.

All dressed up after a family holiday dinner, I told the camera my little cousin complimented me on my “pajamas.” I was not in pajamas but trousers, a sweater and Dr. Martens.

To be honest, I’m not sure why I thought anything else would happen. I didn't put a lot of effort into that video — I actually tried harder in every other post I made.

Expecting life to change at the hands of the internet was foolish. 15 seconds of fame can’t change an entire life’s experience.

Going viral has always been an end-all-be-all kind of thing to me, but maybe it's just the end. The idea of making content just for the purpose of going viral is no longer enticing. Now that I know what going viral is like, and that it's not a big deal, I can look up from the screen and focus on reality.

I’m no longer constantly recording instead of taking it all in. I’m not missing moments because I’m editing a video. I’m not refreshing my follower list every few minutes.

I am, however, still spending two hours watching funny TikToks before bed. I see a lot of silly cat videos and ironic POVs — they're entertaining enough, but they're not life-changing. I may not want to go viral anymore, but I still want to spend every waking minute watching TikToks. Speaking realistically, this will not be changing anytime soon, but I am okay with that.

Perhaps fame via the internet is not for me, but I will still appreciate the content as it pours in. And who knows -- I might go viral again someday, but I definitely won't be trying to.